FURIA And Team Vitality Win ECS Series 3

ECS Series 3 finished with FURIA and Team Vitality qualifying for ECS Season 7 Finals. They defeated INTZ eSports and OpTic Gaming to join North, Astralis, compLexity, and NRG Esports.

ECS Series 3 – North America

A dominance of the Brazilians

The Brazilian teams were dominant in the third ECS Qualifying Series considering that three out of four teams in Semi-finals were Brazilian squads. In the first match, FURIA convincingly defeated Spacestation on Cache (16-6) and Nuke (16-3). VINI was playing particularly well as he finished the match with 47 frags in total.

In the Semi-final, FURIA confronted another Brazilian team, Luminosity Gaming who previously knocked out Team Singularity with ending score 2-1 (16-11, 10-16, 16-10). The first map was Luminosity’s pick – Cache. Luminosity started off in convincing manner clinching 7 out of 8 opening rounds. However, FURIA managed to tie the result and after a great fight, the first leg went into Overtime.

In Overtime, Luminosity didn’t concede a single round. Therefore, they won on Cache 19-15. Teams then moved to Inferno where we saw two CT-sided halves. FURIA kicked off on CT side first, so they had a huge advantage when side switched (12-3). The other Brazilian team got so close to FURIA and almost caught up but arT and co. put the game to bed (16-11).

The final map was Overpass where neither team had great results, but FURIA definitely had better statistics. Accordingly, they dominated Luminosity in both halfs to reach the Grand Final. In Grand Final, they faced another Brazilian team, INTZ eSports who previously overcame ATK and Cloud9.

Grand Final

The Grand Final almost featured an incredible comeback by INTZ. The all-Brazilian final started off on Inferno, one of two best FURIA’s maps. Also, INTZ had terrible results on that map in the last 12 months. They played 27 matches and barely won 25% of the total number. This fact manifested itself in the first leg of Grand Final. INTZ won only four rounds throughout the whole first leg.

Kscerato from FURIA performed extraordinarily well taking an incredible number of 35 kills and 5 assists, followed by 100% KAST and 140 ADR. His rating after the match was 2.55.

However, he didn’t play that well on the second map, Train. At one point, FURIA was leading 12-8, but then their opponents secured eight rounds in a row to take the match to map of decision.

Source: FURIA

The Final was to be decided on Mirage. FURIA again played so well at the beginning and they had an upper hand until 22nd round. The second-best Brazilian team had an advantage all the way to the last round, but in the 22nd round, INTZ gained momentum. The result was 14-7 when INTZ took the wheel and finally tied a score to move things to Overtime. However, they apparently didn’t have enough energy to complete a comeback as FURIA won all four rounds in Overtime to secure a spot in the ECS Finals.

ECS Series 3 – Europe

An easy job for Team Vitality

In the European Division of ECS Series 3, it looked like Team Vitality had an easy job to reach the Grand Final. Considering that there weren’t the best teams in the world like Astralis, North, FaZe, and so on, the French team was one of the front runners at ECS Series 3.

They confidently came to this event after lifting a trophy at Charleroi Esports in Belgium. In the first match, Team Vitality defeated the legendary team, Virtus.pro pretty easily (16-10, 16-7). Afterward, they faced Valiance in the Semi-finals and played well again. So that match finished in Vitality’s favor (16-9, 16-13).

On the other side of the Bracket, another Grand Finalist, OpTic, had a little bit of a harder path. They bested G2 Esports in the first match after two close legs (19-17, 16-11). Then, AVANGAR forced them to play three maps in Semi-final. Anyway, OpTic prevailed to reach the ECS Series 3 Grand Final.

Grand Final

Interestingly, both FURIA and Team Vitality played ECS Series 2 Final but lost. However, this time, they found their way to the main event.

The Grand Final kicked off on Inferno, the map that Danes picked. Nevertheless, Frenchmen (Team Vitality) won eight out of ten first rounds. OpTic Gaming didn’t allow Team Vitality to conclude the first half in a dominant manner so they set the score on 7-8. Regardless, this minimal advantage turned out to be sufficient for Vitality to win the match as they conceded only two rounds up to the end of the first map.

Source: Team Vitality

Team Vitality won OpTic’s map pick, but Danes bounced back on Overpass in the same manner. They dominated Frenchmen with ending score 16-7. The map of the decision was Nuke, and Team Vitality’s young prospect, ZywOo stepped up to lead his team to victory.

Team Vitality used their advantage at the beginning as CT side considering that Nuke favors Counter-Terrorists. They secured the first half with dominant result 12-3. A comeback was a long shot for OpTic, so Vitality easily finished them off allowing them to win just another 3 rounds. Hence, Frenchmen joined two Danish teams at ECS Finals.